


The Ticking of a Clock

by Tito11



Category: Downton Abbey, Political Animals
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Crossover, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-29
Updated: 2014-06-29
Packaged: 2018-02-06 15:56:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1863672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tito11/pseuds/Tito11
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thomas Barrow is a man with a broken heart and a broken pocket watch. TJ Hammond is a guy who's completely lost his way. Their paths shouldn't cross, but through time and space, they do. Broken doesn't always mean useless. Lost doesn't always mean alone.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Ticking of a Clock

**Author's Note:**

> So, okay! Time travel fic! This is hands down the most ridiculous thing I've ever written, but I'm doing it completely straight, no crack at all. There will probably be: angst, miscommunication, cop-outs, short chapters, run-on sentences, a hellishly long wait between updates, a happy ending. If anyone's interested in reading more, give me a shout out or something :)
> 
> You may notice that I re-purposed a drabble I did the other day. Truth is, I actually wrote it for this fic and then re-purposed it into a drabble, not the other way around *shrugs*

After seeing Jimmy off on the six-fifteen train, Thomas makes and executes plans to get roaring drunk. He stops at the first pub he sees on the way back through the village and orders two pints- one for each hand. One great love gives way to another, he thinks as he gulps down the drink in his good hand. But he’ll not cry, not tear up like some great bleeding school girl, no matter how tempting that may seem. It makes no difference, in the end, whether Jimmy is here or abroad; Jimmy will never love him either way, and Thomas has done his crying on that front already.

He’s got a bit in him by the time the girl sidles up to him. He’s seen her around the village before, it being such a small place, but he hadn’t the opportunity or inclination to chat her up. She’s one of those he’d encouraged Jimmy to pursue while Thomas was gone in America, but nothing had ever come of that, in the same way Thomas’s other Jimmy-related hopes and dreams had fallen flat on their arses. “Jimmy, contra mundi,” he’d said and that’s the way he likes it, apparently.

“Hello,” the girl says, flashing him a smile. “You work in the Big House, don’t you?”

She’s fluttering her eyes like she thinks Thomas might want to buy her a drink. He could, he supposes, and really, why not? He doesn’t, with girls, but that’s not to say he can’t. He could buy her a drink, something girl-ish, and then walk her home. She might let him steal a kiss under the moonlight, and then he’d… then he’d do what, exactly? She’d still be a girl, and she’d still not be Jimmy, no matter how drunk Thomas got. She’s got nothing he wants, and he could never love her.

“I do,” he says after only a moment’s pause. “And they don’t give us time away lightly, so I’d like to spend what I’ve been given in peace, if it’s all the same to you, Miss.”

“Oh,” she says, looking hurt. “Well.”

“Well,” Thomas repeats, grinning at her with all his teeth. He turns back to his drinks and she scuttles away to harass some other poor sod. There may never be another like Jimmy, Thomas thinks, but he’s not pathetic; he’s not going to settle for less than what he wants. If that means being alone forever, so be it. Life’s easier without love, anyway, and Thomas knows that better than anyone.

 

In the end, he drinks for five hours straight, tipping back pint after pint (and occasionally something stronger), until he’s out a week’s pay and falling off his seat. How he makes it back to the house, he’ll never know, but make it back he does, and he doesn’t make a spectacle of himself coming into the hall, either. He’s got the key in his pocket, the one Mr. Carson entrusted to him when he said he would be out late on his half-day, so he locks the place up and climbs the stairs wearily to his room. It’s a long climb, but tired as he is, he can’t quite manage to lay down in his bed when he gets there. 

Something’s been niggling at him all night, ever since the encounter with the girl at the pub. It was her eyes, maybe, the color of them the same as Thomas’s mum’s, God rest her soul. She’d had green, too, and her hair had been fiery red, and she’d had more men in her bed than her husband knew about. No one had been more surprised than her at Thomas coming into the world a tiny double of his father. And she’d loved him for it, he remembers that. But she’d been gone by the time he was twelve from childbirth and the babe with her, and his dad went the same way a year later from the bullet he’d put through his own head. 

And then there’d only been Thomas, thirteen and hard-eyed, a lifetime behind him of being odd and knowing it, and a second-hand cap on his head. He’d had a train ticket to his new life at ‘the Big House’ in one pocket and a watch in the other- a watch that had never worked, despite all his father’s tinkering. Thomas had never managed to get it ticking, either, and lord knows he’d tried. 

Through that first hard year, with Mr. Carson’s wrath coming down upon him at every fumbled step in the servant’s hall and every missed scuff on his shoes, Thomas had kept the watch in his pocket, slipping a hand in to stroke it every time he thought he couldn’t find the strength to keep himself upright and going forward. He’d spent his nights, what there were of them, tinkering and messing about, trying to get the piece working, but he’d never been able. He’d kept it still in his pocket, though, until the night eight months in when he’d had a particularly rough berating over his apron ties being untidy, and then he’d finally had enough- he’d gone to Miss O’Brien and cried in her skirts. She’d boxed his ears, told him that if he couldn’t think of a way to make his own life better, he didn’t deserve to have it. He’d taken that bit of advice to bed with him that night and to heart after that, and the next day he’d tricked the other hall boy, the one who’d come on with him, into using boot black on the downstairs silver, swiftly directing Mr. Carson’s anger to him instead of Thomas. 

After that, he’d put the watch away. After all, what good was it doing anyone to hold on to childish memories? The past was past and Thomas didn’t need that rubbish anymore.

He needs it now, though. 

In the bottom-most drawer of his desk, there’s a box- hardwood and latching, and looking as though it was made to store a mantelpiece clock. It may have at one time, but these days, it stores all of the things that are precious to Thomas. Carefully, he lifts the box from the drawer and carries it back to the bed, where he sits and spends a few moments simply running his fingers over the lid. If he opens it, he knows, he won’t be able to stop himself crying. He’d sworn he wouldn’t, back at the pub, but that seems days ago now, and anyway, everyone knows a clear-headed promise can’t hold for a drunk man. He takes a deep breath, and flips the lid.

The letters are on top, of course, because he adds to them every now and again (and hopefully more often in future, with Jimmy promising to write). He doesn’t have the letters from the Duke any longer, and more the shame for that, but he’s got ones from his cousin Harold in Bombay, and from his mad Aunt Alice before the fever took her five years ago. He’s got two years’ worth from Sarah, as well, ones smudged with mud and blood from the trenches, and the stolen letter to Edward Courtenay from his mother, stained with tears and blood from the night of his suicide.

Under the letters is a hair comb with an inlay of ivory pearls, one Lady Sybil had left behind when she ran off to get married. He’d taken it from her jewel box after she’d gone to Ireland with Branson, and she hadn’t noticed it missing when she came back. No one else had noticed, either, not even when they were all going through her things after she passed. It could be Miss Sybbie’s, he thinks, for her wedding, but until then, it’s his and his alone. 

Beneath the comb, there are Thomas’s letters from the War Office- his battlefield commission and his demob papers. He has no use for those things, not now, but he does sometimes get to staring at them, flexing his hand and wondering just how the bloody hell he managed to come through that mess alive. 

And under that, at the very bottom of the box, is the watch.

Carefully, Thomas reaches in and takes the thing out, holds it in his hand like the precious bit of his past it is. It’s not a pretty thing, this watch; it’s silver but tarnished and when he opens it, the glass is cracked, just like it’s always been, from the very first time he saw it.

Mindful of the watch’s poor condition, Thomas sets to winding it. It won’t work, he knows that. It’s got all the right bits in all the right places, winds just like it should, and yet- it’s never ticked a day in its life. Thomas knows all that. He winds it anyway. It’s thirty-two winding strokes with his right thumb before he feels the resistance. He stops, takes a breath, and holds the watch up to his ear, hoping for- he doesn’t know what. Ticking, maybe, or grinding. He gets neither, only the silence of a broken watch.

Just as well, he figures, and the empty sort of feeling he’s been fighting all night overwhelms him at last. This watch is like him, in a way: scuffed on the outside and broken on the in. Neither of them will ever be whole, not if Thomas is any judge, but at least they’re not alone, either. Thomas doesn’t have Jimmy, not anymore, but he’s got a bloody useless watch handed down from his bloody useless father, so everything will be alright, won’t it?

Thomas snorts out a laugh that turns into a sob halfway through. His eyes are aching. He could cry now, he thinks, and he does. He blinks, once and then again. His lips start to tremble and his teeth set to chatter. His nose is running already. The first tear spills out over onto his cheek and runs slowly down his face, then drips into his lap, right onto the broken clock, and that does it: the floodgates open.

He doesn’t know how long he cries; his watch is broken, after all. By the time he calms himself down, though, he’s absolutely wretched- sticky from tears and sweat, aching all over, his palm with painful creases from clenching at the watch still in his hand.

One great love, he thinks to himself again, and this one ends just like the rest. Well, that’s enough of that, isn’t it? 

Drying his eyes, Thomas puts all of his treasures back into the box and closes the lid. He should put the box away, he thinks, and get himself undressed, but he can’t quite muster up the energy to stand. Instead, he lies back against his pillows and clutches the box to his chest. He closes his tired eyes, wills himself to sleep.

He’ll keep the box close tonight. He doesn’t know what he’s going to do with himself, but that’s a concern for morning. It will be better in the morning. It has to, because it can’t get any worse, can it? It’ll be better. It’ll be-

The last sound he hears before he falls asleep, catching on the edge of a dream, is the soft tick-tick-tick of a watch.


End file.
